


learning to be brave in my beautiful mistakes

by badboy_fangirl



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-28
Updated: 2013-07-28
Packaged: 2017-12-21 14:28:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/901358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badboy_fangirl/pseuds/badboy_fangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elena probably shouldn't have prefaced her <i>I love you, Damon</i> with what a terrible choice it was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	learning to be brave in my beautiful mistakes

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Crystal Ball" by P!nk. I just missed them, so I had to write them. And once again, what happened wasn't quite what I planned. You'd think I'd be used to it by now.

She discovers something new every day. 

(About being a vampire, about being in love with Damon Salvatore. See, somehow, those things are intertwined so closely Elena can rarely tell them apart.)

(That's okay, though, she knows they aren't the same. They aren't really different, either.)

He's infinitely patient. This isn't surprising; she remembers when Katherine wasn't in the tomb.

(Vampires live a really long time, you know.)

He doesn't expect anything. But he loves like it's the last time, every time. 

(Elena probably shouldn't have prefaced her _I love you, Damon_ with what a terrible choice it was.)

She _loves_ him, though. Like, deeply, congruently loves him. Like, some days, she's sure she loves him as much as he loves her, and that's terrifying.

Because nobody should love like that.

 

 

She remembers the surprise she felt when she saw the soft, satisfied smile on his face the morning after they first made love. In truth, that actually doesn't compare with his ringing laughter, and the non-stop touching that goes on now that they are together without fear of the sire bond.

(Elena cannot tell a single solitary difference within herself now that it's supposedly gone, but that's not a conversation they will ever have.)

A happy Damon is distracting, and tantalizing, and addictive. She finds herself purposely doing things to make him laugh. (He's particularly fond of the dumb puns her dad used to tell, so when she starts reminiscing about that, he always says, "Tell me another one!")

She never realized how good it could feel to make someone so happy. Or maybe it's just the reward of making _Damon_ happy, because he hadn't been for such a long time.

What it is, really, is that it takes so very little to make him happy.

(It just takes her.)

 

 

His fingers comb through her hair as she rests against his shoulder. They are sweaty and sated, but somehow her desire for him never truly recedes. 

Maybe it's a vampire thing. 

Maybe it's a Damon thing.

(See how it's hard to tell the difference between the two?)

"What're you thinking?" he asks, his voice a low murmur. He jostles his shoulder under her head. "I can practically feel the wheels turning. More terrible decisions to make?"

She hears the smile; he thinks it's funny now.

"Sometimes, it just feels like...too much. You know?" she replies, her hand smoothing across the soft skin of his belly. His muscles quiver and tighten, and just that fast, he's hard and ready again, and a split second after that, he's flipped their positions so that he's between her legs, and she automatically arches up to meet him.

"I know," he says, and his eyes search hers. She doesn't know what he's looking for. She hopes he never finds it.

(She's sure it's not good, whatever it is.)

 

 

Damon's tongue is wickedly talented. It's voracious. It's quick. It makes her scream, and gush, and pull his hair.

(Elena loves his tongue.)

Damon's fingers are gentle, but speedy. Somehow they can be everywhere at once, across her body so fast, she's just reveling in the contact at the small of her back when she can feel them on the underside of her knee, or plucking at her nipple.

(He made her come, once, just from stroking her nipples.)

When he's inside her, she can't think of anything else; she's tried, really she has.

At first it had been a teasing challenge on his part. She told him she felt consumed, and he reminded her that she really always wanted that. She had tried to argue, but it was difficult with his lips on hers, and then she'd wanted him so much so fast that she'd pulled open his pants and impaled herself too quickly. He had, of course, noticed the wincing pain of discomfort in her eyes, because Damon never misses anything. They'd been in the library when she had mounted him in his favorite reading chair, but with vampire speed, he had repositioned her legs so they hung over the arms of it, and his finger had found that spot between them that made her more than wet enough to accommodate her desire.

He often told her he had forgotten more about sex than she'd had an opportunity to even learn in only 18 years, but Elena is pretty sure he never forgot anything. That day, in the library on his lap, she had come so hard she had ruined his clothes.

Vampire sex or Damon sex? Who would ever know?

She felt guilty sometimes, when she remembered how she had thought about him when she was with Stefan. So she tried to think of anything else while she was with him, to even the score somehow. But it never worked. Damon consumed her mind, body, and heart.

(If Elena still has a soul, that is his, too.)

She wakes up in the middle of the night, with him spooned around her, and realizes what she feels now is far _more_ than she ever felt when the sire bond existed.

That's when she begins to know real fear.

 

 

When you're a kid, you think romantic love is the end all, be all. When you're barely 17 years old and your parents die in a horrific car accident, you figure out that doesn't matter at all.

When you fall in love with not one, but two vampires in one year, you think, _well, maybe..._

When you spend three months solid with Damon Salvatore, you realize, you never could have had a fucking clue what romantic love meant. 

(Elena Gilbert stands on a beach in St. Martin, and begins to understand the foundation of the all-consuming love of Damon Salvatore is based on no conditions whatsoever. She hasn't done anything to earn his devotion, and yet he gives it so freely, she can only attempt to return it.

She will begin college in a few weeks' time, and her boyfriend will go home to half-bully, half-mentor her little brother, who is back from the dead, and she will never know a vampire life without the magic that is Damon Salvatore.)

She decides it doesn't matter where the line is between being a vampire and loving a vampire. All she knows is she will never do it with less than everything she is. Imperfectly, with insults wrapped in words of love, with Damon smirking at her the whole time, trying to hide the fact that he doesn't think it can ever last.

Somehow, every snafu will just make her more bold, will make every step more certain, will allow her to be consumed, and also consume with equal measure.

(She carves the metaphorical heart into her mind's eye, _Elena Gilbert + Damon Salvatore = 4ever_.)


End file.
